You have to stand every day three or four hours of visitors. Nine-tenths of them want something they ought not to have. If you kee...p dead-still they will run down in three or four minutes. If you even cough or smile they will start up all over again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Papacy is no other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof; For so did the Papacy ...start up on a Sudden out of the Ruins of that Heathen Power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shodd...y by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... God allows the wheat and the tares to grow up together, and ... the tares frequently get the start of the wheat and kill it ou...t. The only difference between the wheat and human beings is that the latter have intellect and ought to combine and pull out the tares, root and branch.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You need an infinite stretch of time ahead of you to start to think, infinite energy to make the smallest decision. The world is g...etting denser. The immense number of useless projects is bewildering. Too many things have to be put in to balance up an uncertain scale. You can't disappear anymore. You die in a state of total indecision.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have always felt that too much time was given before the birth, which is spent learning things like how to breathe in and out wi...th your husband (I had my baby when they gave you a shot in the hip and you didn't wake up until the kid was ready to start school), and not enough time given to how to mother after the baby is born.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The stuff of which tragedy and comedy are made is the same stuff. The foibles of mankind work up more easily into comedy than into... tragedy, and this is the chief difference between the two. We readily understand the Nemesis of temperament, the fatality of character, when it is exposed on a small scale. This is the business of comedy; and we do not here require the labored artifice of gods, mechanical plot, and pointed allegory to make us realize the moral. But in tragedy we have the large scale to deal with. A tragedy is always the same thing. It is a world of complicated and traditional stage devices for making us realize the helplessness of mankind before destiny. We are told from the start to expect the worst: there is going to be suffering, and the suffering is going to be logical, inevitable, necessary. There is also an implication to be conveyed that this suffering is somehow in accord with the moral constitution of the universe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If I were twenty or thirty years younger, I would start afresh in this field with the certainty of accomplishing much. But I shoul...d have to learn from the bottom up, forgetting the theatre entirely and concentrating on the special medium of this new art. My mistake, and that of many others, lay in employing "theatrical" techniques despite every effort to avoid them. Here is something quite, quite fresh, a penetrating form of visual poetry, an untried exponent of the human soul. Alas, I am too old for it!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the sa...me time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Many divorces are not really the result of irreparable injury but involve, instead, a desire on the part of the man or woman to sh...atter the setup, start out from scratch alone, and make life work for them all over again. They want the risk of disaster, want to touch bottom, see where bottom is, and, coming up, to breathe the air with relief and relish again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »